Review Back sounds like an excellent idea: I review your site in exchange for you reviewing mine. It’s worked well for John Chow in the past, but with Big Brother, er Google, cracking down on webmasters doing what they can to get links is Review Back in danger of getting sites in trouble like Pay Per Post did? For those who don’t know, Google gave more than a few sites a PageRank 0 for buying reviews through PPP. They’ve even banned PPP from the search engines all together. A few weeks before that Google also hit anyone selling Text Links, especially through the Text Link Ads service with lower PR. Review Back is probably still small enough not to be on the radar but I’m sure Google would probably frown on the idea if not down right denounce it. Don’t confuse my opinion on what Google would do with what I think about the service: I love the idea. I’d love to use it.
There are other services out there like this and I’m not trying to disparage Review Back in any way. As I said, I’d love to use it and think it’s a great idea. I fear I’ve become gun shy of trying things lately because of Google’s extreme smack down on links. Will they target trading links next? Thoughts?
[tags]Link Building, Review Back[/tags]
As far as I have been told, they haven’t directed this stuff at link exchanges, which is what I’d throw this under. If Google does go after link exchanges (i.e. in a way that actually harms your site)… well… that’s a whole different can of warms. I would do it if I wanted to!
Yeah, I think link exchanges are still ok. I think Google’s algo is probably smart enough to detect a 2-way link and probably discounts it some but I hope they don’t decide to crack down on them.
My fear with services like Review Back (and others like it) is it creates a central place and makes it easier for webmasters to trade links. If people start abusing it for the PR then Google might consider similiar actions.